


I Brought Flowers to the Game

by FlockOfPigeons



Category: Blaseball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26972164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlockOfPigeons/pseuds/FlockOfPigeons
Summary: Not all reunions are happy ones
Kudos: 4





	I Brought Flowers to the Game

I brought flowers to the game. They were crushed underfoot in the stands. 

* * *

The picture hung in Tyler Violet’s locker, fixed to the metal surface inside the door with tape. Black and blue lines zigzagged across the tape’s surface, little guitars patterning its surface. Some sort of commemorative purchase from one of the Garages’ games. Ziwa had left it behind. A peace offering? A mistake? Tyler wasn’t sure. But they had used it for this all the same. It seemed fitting. 

They looked so happy. Tyler’s face was out of frame, Ziwa caught in a fit of cackling at their height difference, but Ty’s arm was visible, slung around their shoulders. It was such a… human moment, so real and vivid Tyler could almost hear it. 

But. Fuck them. They had made their choice, and Tyler had created a little shrine to hope in the one place that they had to look every damn day of every damn season. 

Tyler had never been a pitcher, and the crumpled photograph missed the trash can by inches. The locker door slammed, and Tyler heard a sharp intake of breath. 

Lachlan hovered nervously at the entrance to the room, shuffling. They almost felt pity for him, a pity mixed with stinging resentment and the guilt that came with it. Trevino’s loss had been one hell of a blow, but Kennedy’s had been a veritable death sentence. The team knew this wasn’t a one time, one season deal now.

They forced a grin nonetheless, which seemed to ease Lachlan’s nerves. Slightly. 

“The… the team asked me to come get you.” Lachlan said, drumming his fingers anxiously against his thigh. “The game’s about to start and…”

“I gotta be there. I know.” Tyler sighed. “Figured I’d end up on the field one way or another, but they’re right. Better to do it myself than find out the alternative.”

Lachlan swallowed hard, looked as if he were about to say something else, then simply nodded, ducking out of the room. Tyler was well aware of their own intimidation factor - quite literally all sharp edges, though perhaps the figurative use of the turn of phrase applied now as well - and was still adjusting to the response from the newbies. Haley had been one thing, adjusting fairly quickly. The dude had fallen from the sky, and an entrance that dramatic set a precedent that his personality had matched. But Lachlan was so normal that it was almost an assault on the senses. 

Tyler went to leave, stopped. Turned and walked to the fallen photograph, uncurled it from the fist-shaped mass it had become. Gave it one last look and set it upon the discarded drink cups and paper towel in the wastebin. It was still a severance, a cutting of ties, a finality. But, perhaps, one that afforded the other party at least a modicum of respect. 

They didn’t hear their phone buzz awake against the bench in the locker room, rousing from its battery-death induced slumber. 

* * *

[Hey, Tyler. I wanted this to be a surprise but… I needed you to know, just in case I didn’t make it. Transportation has gotten a little weird and slow with the whole flooding thing, huh? Anyways…]

[I’m coming home. Not like. Forever. But for a while. I’ll be at the game. Keep an eye on the stands when you can, eh? I’ll be there. Or like. I’ll try to at least.]

[Fuck, Tyler. I’m really sorry. For everything. I just want to see you. And talk about some stuff.]

[Good luck! I’m rooting for you guys!]

I glanced at my phone, heart slowing from its thunderous pace. The last message - its time stamps hours later than those sent before - joined the rest of the parade of blue bubbles in the text window. Delivered, not read. And Ty had always left their read receipts on. They were chronically forgetful when it came to replying, usually busy writing lyrics and chords that danced in brutal tandem. Scraping against ears and heartstrings in a way that should never have worked, but did, having their own angry, melancholic beauty. More angry than not, as of late. 

Initially, some selfish part of me had wanted to attribute that anger to my leaving. Deep down, I knew that if it was a factor at all, it was a small one. I had followed the news, obviously - Blaseball had always been in the cards for me, ever since the players took to the pitch. Just not here. I had spent my whole damn life here, making music of my own, those classic punk anthems about wanting to leave home to spite the people who told you that you never would, never could. That you wouldn’t make it. All that jazz. 

So when I heard about the team in Seattle, that drive had become all encompassing. I had scraped together money, saved for months, followed every game. I had cheered for the Talkers of course, how could I not? My roommate played for them. But they weren’t the team for me. The Garages beckoned, and I heeded the call. I had left Halifax with the same guitar and suitcase I carried now, the strap of the instrument’s fabric case wearing heavy against my shoulder. I hoped that I might just be able to stow them under the stadium seats during the game. I wasn’t optimistic enough to think that Ty would let me stay in the apartment - I still had the key, but surely they had changed the locks - but I hadn’t gotten here in time to check into my hotel before going to the stadium. I had barely had time to pick up the flowers. It’s damn hard to find flowers in a flooded country, yknow?

They were sunflowers. Cut short, bundled together in black wax paper. There was some irony in someone like Ty liking such an… optimistic flower, but it’s one of the things I lov- liked about them. 

They were symbolic of our friendship. A ray of hope, maybe, in a time that had gotten so dark that I felt that I needed to be there for my best friend. Nothing more, I told myself. I had given that up, sure at the time that it was the right decision. 

Maybe I had just forgotten that some doors didn’t open again once you’d closed them. 

The stadium was loud when I got there, the game already well underway. The tone of the crowd was different than the ones I’d been a part of in seasons past, though. They were nervous, tense, and as I carefully juggled my luggage and flowers as I sat down, I noticed that my hands were shaking. I forced myself to relax, hoping I hadn’t bruised the stems in my subconscious death grip upon them. I added my voice to the crowd, cheering for the Talkers with a fervour inspired by that undercurrent of anxiety. Wanting them to win, wanting it to be over fast, not just for the sake of victory but for survival. 

Tyler was incredible out there. It’s hard to explain what it’s like watching someone you know and care about play a game like Blaseball. Passion and loss intermingling, sense of self preservation thrown to the wind because you know that there’s no other option. 

And remaining composed and strong and goddamn beautiful in the midst of it. 

So beautiful. 

So bright as they went up in flames. 

I couldn’t process it at first. 

I didn’t notice the flowers hit the ground, really, only as a crunch against the cement. A sound normally so quiet rendered almost deafening in the context of shocked silence. 

And then I was moving, feet landing on yellow petals, running, and I think I was yelling their name and I could barely see because oh god the tears came so fast and hard and I jumped over the barricades and skinned my knees on the pass and I-

Was on the field. I was on the goddamn field. And I had picked up the bat. I didn’t notice that my palms were singed for hours. Not until hours after the game, and even that coming after I had been guided gently into the dugout and held by people who didn’t know who the hell I was, only that we were connected by the same loss. No one’s eyes meeting mine, really, any attempts at eye contact thwarted by glazed expressions. Grim knowledge that, no matter what, the game must continue. 

I know I played that game. All that practice in batting pens against mechanical pitches suddenly tested by experience in the flesh. I don’t know how well I did. I didn’t care. I just knew I wasn’t going home. 

Or, rather, I was. Just not the one I expected. 

I brought flowers to the game. 

I never went back to Seattle for anything but an away game. 

And Tyler never changed the locks. 


End file.
